After Facebook and Obama, Chris Hughes Launches Nonprofit Jumo

March 18, 2010, Los Angeles Times — Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who helped launch the social networking phenom and then the tour-de-force online organizing campaign for Barack Obama’s presidential bid, on Thursday unveiled his latest endeavor: A website to connect individuals and organizations striving to help the world.

The site is called Jumo, which means “together in concert” in Yoruba, a West African language. It will officially open for business in September or October. He announced the new project on his blog and on Twitter.

Hughes, 26, who now lives in New York, wants to use the experience and knowledge he gained at Facebook and on the Obama campaign to “have maximum impact on the world.”

In an interview, Hughes said he arrived at the decision to form a nonprofit that would tap the power of the Internet to connect people and causes after a post-campaign year of traveling in Africa, Asia and Latin America and work as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm and at his old stomping grounds, Facebook.